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The Firewall in the Mind (Slide 31)
Herding cats: Webheads

The idea of herding cats segues nicely into the final part of my talk, and that is the other thing I have been working on lately that some of you might have heard of. This is the Webheads projects that I have been doing for the past several years with Michael Coghlan in Australia and Maggi Doty in Germany, and more recently with John Steele in Puerto Rico.

Conducting online classes, or trying to monitor chats to which we invited all comers, or moderating lists or bulletin boards, is another endeavor not unlike herding cats. Not impossible to control, but perhaps undesirable to control. Undesirable because such projects tend to take on lives of their own. The organic nature of online interactions is a great asset, and in my Webheads project, I've just set wheels in motion and greased and nurtured them with a bit of HTML and email, and then I sit back and enjoy the serendipitous outcomes.

Webheads makes a good story, but before I carry on, let me introduce you to the Webheads.

http://www.homestead.com/vstevens/files/efi/webheads.htm